Google and Yahoo Email Update

Gmail and Yahoo Blocking your emails?

This is happening because Google and Yahoo are cracking down on domains that don’t have SPF, DMARC, and DKIM

Both providers have announced intentions to upgrade several commonly-understood best practices into full-blown requirements, warning that mail could be rejected if it doesn’t meet their stated criteria. Luckily, the listed items should already be familiar to many senders, and have likely already influenced sender reputation in the past without being so explicitly stated.

Note: You can read more about these changes from Google at
https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection

 

Please note: The most important item is the first one!

While there are several details in each announcement, the salient points for bulk senders are:

✅ Authenticate your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These industry standards aren’t new, but they have historically been considered optional. Without getting too technical, an SPF record tells receivers to reject messages that are sent from IPs that aren’t listed within the domain’s SPF record. DKIM signatures allow receivers to connect an email to its sender, and verify that the message hasn’t been modified in transit. A DMARC policy is an additional layer that tells the receiver how to treat mail that isn’t passing SPF and/or DKIM.
For specific details on how to do this consult your domain host.

To authenticate your emails, you need to set up DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records in your domain’s DNS. These 3 records prove that the emails you send are from you — the domain owner — not a random person pretending to be you.

If you’re seeing a decline in your Open Rate or the 5.7.26 error from Gmail, you need to review your DNS records to figure out what’s missing.

Setting up SPF, DKIM and Dmarc records in your domains DNS can be a bit technical. I’m not a technical guy and I couldn’t explain this nearly as well as Will from SpaceRex over on YouTube. His video here will explain what needs to be done. But, before you panic over all of this stuff go to MXToolbox to see if your settings are up to date. It’s a free tool that will quickly explain if your emails will be delivered or not.

Now, assuming your DNS settings are good there may be other issues that cause deliverability problems. If you’d like to learn more about this, check out Emails Delivered.